IN EUROPE IN THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES. 37 
as wholly imaginary. That locusts ever fell at any time or in any 
country a cubit thick over an extended area, we do not believe. But it 
not imfrequently happens that they are driven by a storm and lodged 
in a ravine, against a bank, fence, or other obstruction, to the depth of 
several inches, or even a foot or more. Purchas 32 remarks that " great 
droughts produce them, at least cause a prodigious increase of them ; in 
1553, after five years' drought, were great armies of them." In the 
tenth year of the Emperor Maurice, after a great drought, extending from 
January to September, there were infinite numbers of locusts in Italy, 
which caused a two years' famine. 
Valleriola 33 notices an invasion of Ai'les in 1555. An invasion of 
Mailand in 1556 is also mentioned. 34 
For another hundred years from this time Eussia appears to have been 
so little afflicted by the locust pest that Koppen fails to note a single 
invasion of that country. But after a rest of forty years they again ap- 
pear in Italy, and Lucretus 35 informs us that — 
So great were the injuries caused in 1571 in this country that the Vice Duke of 
Alcala, D. Parafante de Ribera, was obliged to put forth by the vote and advice of 
the royal council on the 8th of October, 1572, the first pragmatic decree De Bruchis, 
title 23, by which it was ordered that the communes should appoint experts and 
practical men to explore their territories and to search out all the places in which the 
locusts had deposited their eggs ; and when found they were to dig trenches in the 
months of September and October through which operation the eggs might be de- 
stroyed. And in the month of April the swine are turned loose to devour the locusts, 
of which they are very gluttonous. The housewives also spread sheets or piecos of 
cloth at convenient times, long and large, upon which the locusts alighting are folded 
up and entrapped. 
In 1613, in the month of May, a supposed new species of locust ap- 
peared in Provence which destroyed the entire crops. 36 
It appears from two papers, one by Bart. Xim. Paton 37 and the other 
by Juan de Quinones, 38 of which we have seen only the titles, that 
Spain was afflicted in 1618 or 1619, probably by C. italicus. 
The account of the locust swarms seen in the Ukraine in 1645 and 
1646 by Beauplan 39 is so interesting that we give it here : 
The grasshoppers, or locusts, which are there so numerous that they put me in mind 
of the scourge which God sent upon Egypt when he would punish Pharaoh. I have 
seen this plague for several years one after another, particularly in 1G45 and 164C. 
These creatures do not only come in legions, but in whole clouds, five or six leagues 
in length and two or three in breadth, and generally come from towards Tartary ; 
which happens in a dry spring; for Tartary and the countries east of it, as Circassia, 
3J Xoc. cit. 
^Curationes medicales, Lib. ii, Ob. 1. 
M W. Strauch. ' Nat m lie he Conterfeyhung des gewaltigen Fluges Heuschrecken." Hagen. 
a Loc cit. 
^Rembold "Von Heuschrecken," 45 — Keferstein; A. Bersandier 'Discours 8ur le degat que lea 
sauterelles firent en Provence, 1613-1614." 
37 "Discorso de la langosta, quo en el tiempo presente aflige y para el venidero amenaza," 1619. 
38 Tratado de las langostas muy util y necessario, en que so tratan cosas de provecho y curiosidad 
para todos los que professau letras divinas y humanas y las inayores ciencias. Madrid, 1620. 
■"A description of the Ukraine,'' in Churchill's Voyages, i, p. 541. 
